Report: Trump Called Fox’s John Roberts Into Oval to Insist He Was Right on Hurricane Threat to Alabama, Bash Shepard Smith
Still clearly chafing about the deluge of criticism he’s received for falsely claiming this past weekend that Alabama was threatened by Hurricane Dorian, President Donald Trump called Fox News White House correspondent John Roberts into the Oval Office to plead his case once more and slam Fox News host Shepard Smith.
According to a CNN report based on an internal Fox News email, the president beckoned Roberts into his office Thursday afternoon to insist he was right and that it was unfair to claim Alabama was never in danger of being impacted by Dorian.
“Fox News was told that Trump was shown a graphic prior to his FEMA briefing last week that appeared to show an older forecast track with Dorian going north through the Florida peninsula and just grazing Alabama,” Roberts and colleague Alex Pappas reported on FoxNews.com an hour before CNN’s piece based on the internal email.
The president has seemingly become obsessed with trying to prove this point, having tweeted about it nine times in the past few days.
“Roberts’ analysis of the meeting was that the President was ‘just looking for acknowledgment that he was not wrong for saying that at some point, Alabama was at risk — even if the situation had changed by the time he issued the tweet’ on Sunday morning, in which he said the state ‘will most likely be hit.’ The President also provided Roberts with graphics to make his points,” CNN reported.
As of the time of Trump’s tweet, however, the projected tracks for Dorian all showed it turning northeast, far away from Alabama.
“The President ‘seemed to agree that the forecast track had moved — but he was adamant that at some point, Alabama was at risk,'” Roberts wrote in the email, per CNN. “He also reminded that on occasions in the past, forecast tracks have changed dramatically.”
As Roberts began to leave, however, Trump called him back to grind another axe with the press — this time to “hit back” at Fox News host Shepard Smith. Smith, a frequent critic of the president, has mocked Trump’s altered Sharpiegate map and, on Thursday, used the president’s transparent ploy to tee up a long, scathing takedown of Trump’s many false statements.
Photo credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images.
